News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch gave his clearest statement yet on who will succeed him in the top job - and it is not one of his children.

He said if he were suddenly to be incapacitated, his chief operating officer, Chase Carey, would take over.

Until recently, Mr Murdoch's son and head of News Corp's UK operations, James Murdoch, has been seen as his father's obvious successor.

But now Rupert Murdoch is speaking more directly about Mr Carey.

"The board and I believe I should continue in my current role as chairman and CEO, but make no mistake, Chase Carey and I run this company as a team," he said.

Mr Murdoch says if he went under a bus, Mr Carey would take over.

He made the comments as he announced a massive drop in profit for News as it continues to deal with the phone hacking scandal.

Results on Thursday show News Corp's quarterly profits fell 22 per cent on the back of weaker box office revenues and reduced DVD sales.

But 80-year-old Mr Murdoch says he has no plans to stand down and the company's board was happy for him to continue in his dual roles of chairman and chief executive.

"I hope that the job won't be open in the near future and I have - you know Chase is my partner - if anything happened to me I'm sure he'll get it immediately," he said.

"But if I went under a bus... but Chase and I have full confidence in James, but you know in the end the succession is a matter for the board."

Heir apparent

Media analyst Peter Cox says in the wake of the News Of The World scandal it would not be the best look for James Murdoch to be anointed heir apparent.

But he says there is still a chance James Murdoch could take the reins.

"I don't think anything's untenable in the wake of the News Of The World scandal because as we'll see lots of their employees will go to jail, a government is nearly brought down, but the one person that gets out of it unscathed of course is going to be Rupert and presumably James as well," he said.

"So I think they just need a bit of time to pass and when the fuss has died down - you can see what the riots are doing in the UK at the moment - a major distraction, I think it will be business as usual in News Corp.

"Rupert would much prefer that one of his children was to be the successor in running as he says what has been his organisation for the last 50 years."

The News Of The World affair heightened concerns among shareholders that the 80-year-old chief executive might not be up to the role any more.

In an hour long briefing on the company's results on Thursday, journalists were given less than six minutes to ask questions.

In that time Mr Murdoch was also pressed on corporate governance.

"I can just assure you we continually evaluate our corporate governance practices and have indeed outside counsel to confirm that we are in compliance with standards of good corporate governance," he said.

But Mr Cox says Mr Murdoch's role as both chairman and chief executive shows that corporate governance at News Corp could be lacking.

"I think it's in breach of what certainly ASX standards are in Australia, that certainly that chief executive and the chairman should not be one and the same person," he said.

"Really we shouldn't have companies that are being dominated by a shareholder that has 13 per cent of the equity and yet has 40 per cent and complete control over the shareholding for the organisation.

"These are definitely areas that should be changed but as you can see with Rupert today that's really not a concern to him and he's going to keep on pushing ahead."

Profit drop

Meanwhile, News Corp made a net profit of $680 million in the three months to the end of June.

That brought the end-of-year-profit to $2.74 billion, up on last year.

Mr Murdoch said it was a "good" financial performance but admitted the hacking scandal that resulted in the closure of the News Of The World had caused some difficulty.

News Corp paid a hefty price for the hacking scandal. It wiped billions of dollars off the value of its shares and it forced the company to drop its bid for the UK pay TV network BSkyB.

Now, a 12th person has been arrested in relation to the affair.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary committee investigation the affair is expected to soon receive a response from James Murdoch on conflicting statements he and other News International executives gave to the committee.